The 1887 Dawes Act allowed the break up of American tribal lands into individual allotments and their assignment to individual Indian property owners. However, the federal government took the authority to lease out mining, drilling and lumbering rights without the consent of the new landowners.
The Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust fund was created to manage proceeds from the leases. It has collected the royalties to be paid into the relevant IIM accounts, and then to individual Indians on a regular basis. However, for decades the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) has been inconsistent in its payments, and it cannot produce an accurate historical accounting of who has or hasn’t been paid and what they’re owed.
One problem with resolving the issue is that Indian landowners and tribal governments don’t have quite the same interests.
So tribal governments have an incentive to maintain good relations with the BIA, and little motivation to resolve the issue, say observers.
Source: Jacob T. Levy, Broken Trust, New Republic Online, January 29, 2003.
For text http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=levy012903
For more on Government Mismanagement http://www.ncpa.org/iss/gov/
FMF Policy Bulletin\11 February 2003
